eBook Review: Making It by Helen Klein Ross

There are some jobs you just don’t want to have. You don’t want to be the advertising agency’s superstar laxative account genius, you don’t want to be the technology-challenged associate who accidentally fires an executive with one wrong keystroke, and you certainly don’t want to go to work one day as a forty-six-year-old creative who gets fired by mistake, on your stay-at-home husband’s birthday, no less. But those scenarios are all part of the rat race in Helen Klein Ross’s Making It (Pocket Books).

Audrey Walker took a real hard look at her life after a computer-user error caused her to lose her job with Tadd, Collins ad agency on the brink of her son’s departure for college. The safety net of the power life she thought she had created for herself unraveled, thread by thread. When the glitch is discovered, Walker throws herself back into her job with a new mission: make sure she’s not expendable, ever again.

Unfortunately, the corporate world can be cruel and arbitrary. The power players know how to call the shots, and having an extramarital affair with the head of a newly merged ad agency that targets a much younger demographic and clientele isn’t the most sound reasoning. But after her near-calamity, Walker alternates between throwing caution to the wind and digging her heels in.

What really sets Ross’s title apart is the immediacy and allure in her writing and her subject matter, the latter of which is something many readers might have a hard time even feigning interest in. While popular television programs about the world of advertising like the series Mad Men have made good fodder for their entertainment value, it’s altogether something else to read a novel based on the ins and outs of corporate advertising. While the corporate world and its callous regard for sales figures over people might not hold much promise for most of us, the story and character development in Making It is compelling.

Thank you, Mercy, for taking the time to read Making It and for your thoughtful and generous take on the novel. Honestly, I wondered if the book would hold up for those who aren’t crazy enough to work in the business. I’m glad you’re proof that civilians might have an interest.